Trustee Scholar Rebeca Strong Garcia and the art of music
Who is Rebeca?
Trustee Scholar Rebeca Strong Garcia (CFA’20) has not only majored in music, worked on campus as a resident assistant and an orientation ambassador for BU libraries, and studied abroad at the Royal College of Music in London. She also received a grant to study music in Switzerland, founded a music outreach series for preschoolers, and held an internship with the Boston Ballet. Can you say “Wow”? But that packed college career isn’t so surprising for a BU Trustee Scholar, and Rebeca is one of the few.
What is a Trustee Scholar?
BU describes Trustee Scholars as “intellectually and creatively adventurous” and says they “demonstrate viewpoints, experiences, or achievements beyond the usual. They are, in other words, not just top students, but extraordinarily well-rounded individuals.”
BU selects about 20 outstanding students each year as Trustee Scholars. Many had 4.0 grade point averages in high school and ranked at the top of their class. The scholarship covers full undergraduate tuition and fees for all four years if the student meets certain criteria.
Studying the sights of music
After Rebeca’s freshman year, the BU Department of Philosophy offered her a Karbank Fellowship to study music history in Florence, Italy.
“You can’t really ‘hear’ music preserved from the Renaissance the way that you can excavate tangible paintings and artifacts.”
Rebeca spent her time visiting art museums to look for musical references in the paintings and sculpture—think of all the instruments and musicians depicted over the centuries. This project led her to create her senior project: an audio tour of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her goal was to give students the opportunity to learn about music history in the same way she did. Her audio tour starts in Ancient Greece and goes through the medieval, Baroque, Impressionist, and later eras with a lively discussion of art and music.